by Renard, Loki
“Well, thanks,” she says, turning around.
I watch her walk away, wondering if I’ve done something wrong. Then I realize that this is just how humans act normally. They don’t start mating wildly with every person who does them a minor favor.
“Er, would you like to get a beverage with me sometime?” I offer an invitation to her retreating back.
“No, thanks. I have beverages,” she says, as she disappears into her apartment.
I didn’t plan for this. I thought I would walk into her life in my human suit and become her mate immediately as I have all other times. Instead, I find myself standing in the empty hall, covered in dog fur, wondering where I went wrong.
I have to try again with Seven. It is hard to interact as a human. As scythkin, I could simply tear the door off the hinges and take her for my own, but in this human flesh bag the rules are different. I need a pretext to talk to her. I can’t just knock on her door and initiate social interaction. That is considered strange. What is not considered strange, for some reason which escapes me, is to knock on her door and invite her to a scheduled occasion with other humans for social interaction.
I am about to knock on her door when I am interrupted by myself. Or rather, my voice.
HUMANS MUST KNEEL
I curse under my breath. It is incredibly annoying to be interrupted in the middle of going about my day. I want to ignore it, but that is another condition of human existence to which I must now submit.
I follow the other humans down to the street. I never thought about how it would feel to perform this act. I thought of it as nothing more than inventory management, but now that my neighbors are dropping to their knees, I feel that pang of humiliation Seven must have felt, which they all must feel when they submit to the faceless, nameless power which commands their obedience.
Suddenly, I am surprised that so many humans acquiesced to my demands. I never explained them. I never informed any of them what was going on. After our conquest, the simulation and everyone in it was reset, the scythkin technology was installed, and it has run since then without issue. Well, there was one issue. That issue is now kneeling obediently just a few people away from me. Seven’s eyes are closed and there is that blank expression of pure peace on her face. My stomach clenches with guilt. I’ve broken her. I’ve turned her into an obedient little peon who does not know anything but the fact she must obey.
I find myself silently willing her to disobedience, but she stays perfectly still as the drones fly over and soon the bell is ringing and all the humans are rising once more, some rubbing their knees, most simply striding off into a new day without giving it further thought.
This is what I relied on when I instituted the ritual. Humans are creatures of habit. I knew if I could install the routine, just as one might install a computer program, they would carry it out without question. They would even defend it after a time. Once, I would have felt triumph knowing that we have likely reached the point where we could turn the audio cues off and the humans would keep kneeling every morning on their own, but it is a hollow victory now.
“Hey,” I say, going up to her.
She’s heading into the building and stops, looking at me with a faint expression of irritation. So this is what human males go through. They must seek the social approval of their mate before being able to spray their seed all over her eggs. Another complexity my kind is not cut out for, but I can do this.
“I am going to have…” the words sound strange coming from my face. “A party.”
Oooooh a lovely tea party. The voice in my suit chimes in. It’s Tyank. He’s spying on me, using the cortical feed in the suit to communicate his irritating mockery to me.
“I will rip your goddamn arms off again,” I growl under my breath.
“What?!” Seven is looking at me in horror.
Fuck. She heard that. Of course she heard that. She’s standing right there.
“I’m, having a party,” I say, hearing the strange cadence of my tone as I try to catch up on myself and work out what I could have been saying instead of what she heard. “And it’s going to be so good it will… tear us all… up? Like, as in, tear up the place?”
She looks at me with an expression which is not encouraging at all. It is one thing to be thought unattractive by a human female, it is something entirely worse to be thought strange. That is because human females are easily preyed upon by the males of the species, who are significantly stronger even if they are not much larger. Evolution was rather brutal to the human female who must navigate a once dangerous social world with nothing but a smile to protect her.
Seven was brave when she saw me for the monster I am, but I am something worse now inside this human suit. I am awkward. And that triggers the survival instincts which lie deep inside the lizard part of her brain.
“Uhm. No thanks. I’m busy.”
“I haven’t told you when the party is.”
“I’m busy a lot,” she says, taking the stairs two at a time to put distance between us.
I stop following her, feeling the sting of defeat and a deep disappointment. She seems to be functioning more healthily now that I have returned her to the simulation, but I do not belong to this world and every attempt to interact with her in it is proving that over and over.
Struck out. Tyank laughs in my head.
“Tyank, I swear, if you don’t turn this channel off, I will come back and…”
You can’t come back unless I bring you back, he says. And if you're not going to be nice, I won’t bring you back. You can live down there for a few years until…
“TYANK!”
My roar makes the windows vibrate, and causes more than a few people to look in my direction with concern. He does have the power to lock me down here, if he is stupid enough to do that. I left him with the mechanism of control, and I am entirely at his mercy. I thought he would be intelligent enough not to abuse that, but apparently it is too tempting to resist.
Calm down, he laughs, saying the only two words guaranteed to make any creature in the entire universe furious.
Seven
I look out the window and see the big man with the blond hair and the blue eyes struggle with himself. He is pacing up and down in front of the building, talking to himself gesticulating wildly, caught in an argument with nothing. If he at least had a phone or something in his hand it might look like he was talking to someone else, but as it is he just seems unhinged.
“Poor guy,” I say to Pants. “What do you think? Should we put him out of his misery?”
Pants licks my leg and then the floor.
“Not yet. Alright.”
Krave
“Excuse me, sir, some people have reported a disturbance.” Two police officers approach me, swaggering with their petty human authority.
My horns want to rise. My dorsal ridge is threatening to spring free and the rage boiling inside me is threatening to make every sharp surface of my body rip through this human suit.
“Everything alright, buddy?” The other cop says.
“Fine,” I say. “My broo… my brother is messing with me.”
They look around. “Can’t see any brother here, pal,” the first officer says.
“I’m not your pal, buddy,” I growl.
He’s not your buddy, guy. Tyank chimes in. I would rip my own auditory system out of my skull if it meant not hearing his voice again. He will pay for this. I swear by every god ever dreamed of, he will pay.
“My brother’s not here,” I explain. “He’s just good at messing with me from a distance.”
“Got one of those myself,” the second officer says in a friendly fashion. “But maybe you could vent somewhere more private. Causing a disturbance out here. Making people worry. Do what I do. Go up to your apartment, write a really long letter, just get all that aggression out…”
“Then shove it into his tightest orifice?”
“Uh, no, buddy,” the cop says. “Then you can burn it, caref
ully, of course, and just let that hostility go.”
I breathe deep. Tyank’s laughter is ringing in my head. He is enjoying this far too much, and I am being pressed to the very limits of what I can take. Being human is frustrating. This weak meat cannot adequately express what rages inside me. And I must pretend to acknowledge and respect the limited authority of these two policemen, who are talking to me, Krave of the scythkin, as if he is a common street lunatic.
“Burn things to feel better,” I nod. “Yes, very good.”
“No, buddy. Don’t burn things.”
“You just told me to burn things.”
“I told you to carefully burn a letter to your brother.”
You’re not going to last another hour down there. Tyank’s voice echoes my own thoughts. I am not going to make it.
“Thanks for your time, officer,” I say as politely as I can.
The officers have only just left me to my own devices when someone bumps into me. A male with a mustache. There’s probably more to him than that, but it’s all I really notice, until he speaks.
“Watch where you’re going… whoa!”
The last part of the sentence is because I just yanked him up off his feet and am dangling him above the pavement.
“What did you say to me?”
“Wa… nothing?” He squeaks like a female. I could crush him into a small ball of meat, but I restrain myself. Then I remember that I need to get some people to come to this social occasion, so I can invite Seven to it.
“Would you like to come to my party?”
“Uhmmm… I’m busy.”
He doesn’t want to come to my party. I am learning another lesson about being human. When people are terrified of you, they don’t want to come to your party.
“Sir! SIR!”
I turn around to see that the same police officers are on their way back. And this time, they're not calling me buddy. They’re running to get to me, and by the time they get to me they are out of breath and unhappy.
“You can’t pick people up, sir.”
“Very sorry,” I say. “Would you like to come to my party?”
“We are not coming to your party. The only party you’re going to be attending is one in a cell.”
“I was thinking of having it in my apartment.”
“I mean, you’re going to be arrested if you keep causing disturbances.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t want to see your face again today, sir. If I do, I’m going to arrest you. Go home.”
I wish I could go home, but instead I have to go to my little human box. I do not like the apartment which has been assigned to me. There are not many free spaces in Seven’s building, which is not one of the nicer buildings in the city. The bathroom of my box is especially depressing, a lime green moldy wet box inside the other box. I find myself looking into the mirror, staring at the face that is not mine. The eyes that are not mine, and wondering to myself how Krave, first born of a hundred, ended up pretending to be a human in a simulation for humans.
Love does brutal things to a male. It is more dangerous than any other affliction, and there is no cure.
Wait.
I have an idea.
Seven opens the door and looks at me, and then down at the mug in my hand.
“I was wondering if I could borrow a cup of sugar for my party.”
Just speaking to her, seeing her face, it is all I want. I don’t need anything more than this, the chance to be near her. She might never see me as anything more than her neighbor, but…
“Dude, you need to leave me alone,” she says, shutting her door.
“Wait.”
I put my foot in the door frame.
“What the fuck!?”
Now she sounds panicked.
“It’s me, Seven,” I say, hearing the desperation in my voice. This world makes me pretend to be weak and I hate it.
“I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name. I’m going to call the cops.”
“No, don’t do that. They said they’d arrest me if they saw me again today, and I can’t be arrested.”
You are so arrested, Tyank chimes in at the worst possible moment, making me snarl with anger.
“What are you doing!?”
She gives me a horrified look.
“Nothing. I’m sorry. Sorry. Okay. Just…”
“I’m calling the police like, right now,” she says, lifting a massive brick of plastic to her ear.
“No. Come on. Please. Seven. You know me.”
I am worse than pathetic right now. She does not remember me. There is no way for her to remember me. She has been sedated and mind flashed and soul-whipped over the past few days and it has left its mark on her. I didn’t expect it to leave a mark on me.
My human suit has wetness on its face. This one was designed not to break so easily, and to emulate human functions, apparently. Like crying. The woman I love does not know me, and I am about to be arrested and imprisoned inside my own simulation.
“Jesus,” Seven says. “Are you crying?”
“No. There’s something in my eye holes. My eyes are inferior.”
“Now you’re making me feel bad,” she whines. “This isn’t even fun anymore.”
“What do you mean, fun anymore?”
A slow, devious smile spreads across her face…
Seven
“Psych!”
“What does that mean?” He is looking at me like a pathetic little puppy and it is breaking my heart, but I’m still going to enjoy this moment.
“It means I fucked with you,” I smirk. “I knew who you were and what you were the moment you came off the elevator with that dog. And then I remembered everything. From the first time we met, to the last. So I decided to have some fun with you.”
“Fun is toying with my emotions, human?”
He steps inside my apartment, pushing me back. I realize why. It’s because that revelation was the final straw for him. His suit is peeling off him like a man-banana, and the true monster inside is emerging to lecture me.
“In this case, yes.”
He snarls, but I just laugh.
“You’re getting off easy,” I remind him. “You used me. You treated me like a prisoner. You told me that you were doing things for my own good, but there was no need to keep erasing me like an etch-a-sketch every time something didn’t go your way. You did that because you wanted to control how I saw you. Well you don’t control me now, because obviously that wipe thing doesn’t work anymore. And you know what else? There are other people in this simulation who know it’s not real as well. I think I met one of them. Your little charade is falling, Krave. You’re losing control. Of me, and of all the humans here. We’re going to break free. We’re going to keep rebelling. One of us after the other. I bet even Kar3n rebels eventually. And then you’re going to have nothing but chaos on your hands - and that’s what you're most afraid of, Mr. Massive alien with your sharp eyes and your glowing shanks. You can’t control all of us.”
He is staring down at me from his great height, his massive arms folded over his chest, his blazing eyes burning into me. I know I am on the precipice of personal danger. As much as he loves me, he is a creature who must be master of his domain at all costs. Everything he has done, no matter how much concern he may have had, has been in the service of maintaining control of the illusion which keeps me and my people captive. And as much as I may love him, I will not stand here another hour of another day and let him run this machinery which makes us all slaves to pointless existence.
“We can feel the hollowness of this,” I tell him. “On some level, we all know it isn’t real.”
“You are not prepared for real,” he grinds out, his fangs flashing. “You are not ready to see yourselves as you truly are, a tiny speck in a universe which would have wiped you out a thousand times already if not for your value to the Galactor corporation, and to scythkin too. This is a glass jar. True. It is a simulated reality. But it is a
lso all you are fit for. It is not just a simulation which Galactor built for you. It is a replica of one your kind built for themselves a very long time ago.
“Then show me what real is.”
“Oh I will,” he says. “But if I do, know that you will beg for the ignorance and innocence your species prizes so dearly, but I will not be able to grant it. I can never wipe you again. The memories you make from now on will be part of your soul forever.”
I lean in, looking him dead in the eye. “Bring. It. On.”
“I’m going to bring it on,” he says. “But first, you’re going to pay for messing with me.”
“Am I?”
“You are,” he growls.
I let out a sound of delight, which is probably not what he expected to hear, but I have missed him. I have missed us, the way we interact. This is all I ever wanted, to be with him without any threat of being wiped like a whiteboard.
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me down on the couch, settling me in on his lap, rather than across it.
“I love you more than anything,” he tells me. “I need you to know that, before you’re screaming for mercy.”
“Oh stop,” I say, pressing a kiss to the blunt part of his cheek. “You’re not going to hurt me. You’d never hurt me. You love me too much.”
“You already know I’d make you hurt, brat,” he rumbles. “But right now, I just want to hold you.”
And I just want to be held. I curl up in his massive lap, feeling his hugeness and his hardness against my softness.
“You are my match,” he says. “My mate. You and I belong together. It was fated by time, and there is no escaping it.”
“Does that mean you want to escape it?”
“No,” he rumbles. “It means I was made for you. Inside the egg I was knit together for you, and you were made for me the same way, generated in the Galactor breeding vats, grown in the laboratory to be nothing more than a specimen, you have transcended their plan for you, and mine. You are a bold, brave spirit, Seven. I was made to be bold, to fight, to destroy and to dominate. You were made for convenience, but you have challenged me and you have won. You have proved yourself my equal, and you will be my mate for life.”
